The biggest threat to helicopters in EECH is, without question, enemy fighters. Fighters are fast, appear on the scene without warning, can evade your missiles easily and are difficult to track and engage. Missiles launched from enemy fighters are much more powerful than your Stingers and can result in instant death if you are hit by one. For instance, an AA-11 Archer is nearly 2.5 times more powerful than a Stinger. The best advice regarding enemy fighters is to avoid them altogether, hunker down and call for friendly air support to deal with them.

If you do elect to take on enemy fighters with Stingers you will have to use unconventional methods to kill them (including one technique we will mention in a subsequent training mission). The most difficult aspect of killing fighters is getting them within the relatively limited engagement range of your Stinger. With a maximum 5km engagement range fighters that are traveling away from you will more often than not outrun your Stinger so the highest percentile shot will be against a fighter that is closing on your position instead of heading away.





The next consideration is that fighters fly high above the battlefield while helicopters are safest at low altitudes in concealed positions. In order for your Stinger seeker to see and lock on to a high altitude fighter you will likely have to pitch your nose radically above the horizon. Once your seeker locks on I would advise firing a minimum of two (probably more) Stingers then dumping your nose and returning to low level in case enemy surface anti-air units are in the vicinity.





Your Stingers are fire and forget, so as soon as you fire start heading for cover and anticipate the fighter coming back for a missile shot on you if your missiles don’t find their mark. If your luck holds your missiles won’t fall for his counter-measures and you’ll be rewarded with the sight of an enemy fighter going down in flames.





The next weapon we will look at is the Hydra 70mm folding-fin aerial rockets. Hydra rockets are carried in pods that can only be mounted on the stub wings. They are unguided and basically require you to aim the helicopter toward the target prior to launching. The Hydra rockets come in two different varieties: the M255 high explosive (HE) and M261 multi-purpose sub-munition (MPSM). The M255(HE) is used primarily against soft targets such as parked helicopters, aircraft, tents and base infrastructure. The M261(MPSM) is most effective against lightly armored vehicles.



Although the rocket pods on the wings cannot move in azimuth (left to right) for targeting they will elevate from about 5 degrees up to -15 degrees down. With this capability it is only necessary to line up the target in the middle of the targeting “I-bar” and the targeting computer will automatically adjust the elevation of the pod to put the rockets on target.

Here you can see we’ve targeted a building. The fact that we’ve centered the target in our HIDSS (helmet targeting) doesn’t mean that our rockets will hit the target since the HIDSS targeting provides for off-axis targeting. The fact that we are not in a position to hit the target is reflected by the fact that targeting “I-beam” is comprised of dashed lines.



Cont..